How Color Blindness Works

Color blind individuals can suffer from an inability to differentiate between hues, and occasionally may not be able to see any colors at all. Learn more about color blindness in this HowStuffWorks podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works dot com
where smart Happens. Hi, I'm Marshall Brain. If you were
to look at your eyes retina with a microscope, you
would find two kinds of cells. There are rod cells,

(00:21):
which can see black and white images, and there are
cone cells, which can see different colors. There are actually
three types of cone cells which are sensitive to three
different colors of light. Some people are born without any
working cone cells. These people are completely color blind. All
they can see our images in black and white, like
a black and white movie. This condition is very rare,

(00:44):
though much more common is a genetic problem that causes
red green color blindness. In this case, the cones that
detect the color green do not work properly, or the
cones that detect the color red do not work properly.
The colors red and green look very very similar, and
the colored purple looks bluish. Mostly white males are affected

(01:05):
by this condition. Women can also be affected by red
green color blindness, but this is less common because the
damaged gene is located on the X chromosome. Be sure
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